Elli had a weight check yesterday. She was 21 lbs. 6 1/2 ounces and 33 1/2 inches long! She had gained slightly over 1 1/2 pounds in one month, and had grown 1 1/4 inches in 2 months! This was particularly fantastic, given that she had only gained 2 ounces in the month before the last weight check. As a result of the height and weight gain, I'm finally getting Elli out of her 12-month sized clothes! (Well, unless they are shorts - in which case, she's finally getting out of the 6-9 month sizes...LOL).
Many of you have asked how her feeding is progressing, so I thought I'd give a little update, complete with pictures. Overall, she's doing very well, although some days, it truthfully doesn't feel that way! She is still eating almost entirely pureed foods, with just a few "chewables" like goldfish crackers, teddy grahams, etc. that are essentially treats for her. We had done a fair amount of work with gritty pears and gritty applesauce (which is the next texture up from smooth puree). However, I was finding that she required a drink in order to swallow the gritty texture, and in the process, she developed the habit of holding even the pureed foods in her mouth until she received a drink to wash it down. Soooo....we had to step back a bit and retrain her to swallow her pureed foods without a drink, and then start over again with gritty applesauce and convince her to swallow that without a drink. She has made great progress with that over the last week, and I think we may be able to legitimately consider gritty applesauce a preferred food by the end of the week.
We still have had regular problems with gagging and vomiting, which frankly gets pretty old. The gagging doesn't bother me so much - I expect that whenever I introduce a new food, especially if it's a vegetable. I also expect it whenever I introduce a preferred food in a new texture (like gritty pears, instead of smooth pears). However, the all-out stomach-clearing vomit has really worn on me. That seems to mostly be a result of a day where she eats really well and her afternoon meals are too close together, due to a long nap, although it can occur at other times as well, particularly if she's sick. Thankfully, since she has gained weight this last month, the dietician gave us permission to drop the before-bedtime snack (which was just a couple of ounces of her special milk), unless there's a compelling reason to give it to her that day (like if she missed a meal, like she does on Sunday mornings at church). Since that's the meal that most often triggers a vomit, we're hoping our vomit clean-up time will be reduced significantly.
Right now, we have meals scheduled at 7:30, 10:00, 12:00, 3:00 and 6:00, plus the bedtime snack as necessary. At each meal, I feed Elli for 20 minutes (or until the food and milk is gone). Sometimes meals take longer than that, if I'm giving her trials at the beginning of a new texture. The following is an example of one of Elli's meals:
In the meal above, Elli had pureed peaches, pureed pizza (yes, you can puree pizza!), gritty applesauce, and gritty pears. The gritty pears were only used as trials before the 20-minute timer started. For the rest, we alternate drink-bite-drink-bite-drink-bite and rotate foods. So, for instance, she would take a drink, bite of peaches, drink, bite of pizza, drink, bite of applesauce. At this point, we've reduced the positive reinforcment (i.e., playing with toys!) to once per rotation. As such, we play with toys after every bite of the hardest food (which in this case, would be applesauce). When we first started, we played with toys after every drink and every bite, so this is much simpler! When trialing a new food/texture, we play with a toy after she swallows each and every bite, so that she has motivation to swallow that new food.
Many of you have asked how her feeding is progressing, so I thought I'd give a little update, complete with pictures. Overall, she's doing very well, although some days, it truthfully doesn't feel that way! She is still eating almost entirely pureed foods, with just a few "chewables" like goldfish crackers, teddy grahams, etc. that are essentially treats for her. We had done a fair amount of work with gritty pears and gritty applesauce (which is the next texture up from smooth puree). However, I was finding that she required a drink in order to swallow the gritty texture, and in the process, she developed the habit of holding even the pureed foods in her mouth until she received a drink to wash it down. Soooo....we had to step back a bit and retrain her to swallow her pureed foods without a drink, and then start over again with gritty applesauce and convince her to swallow that without a drink. She has made great progress with that over the last week, and I think we may be able to legitimately consider gritty applesauce a preferred food by the end of the week.
We still have had regular problems with gagging and vomiting, which frankly gets pretty old. The gagging doesn't bother me so much - I expect that whenever I introduce a new food, especially if it's a vegetable. I also expect it whenever I introduce a preferred food in a new texture (like gritty pears, instead of smooth pears). However, the all-out stomach-clearing vomit has really worn on me. That seems to mostly be a result of a day where she eats really well and her afternoon meals are too close together, due to a long nap, although it can occur at other times as well, particularly if she's sick. Thankfully, since she has gained weight this last month, the dietician gave us permission to drop the before-bedtime snack (which was just a couple of ounces of her special milk), unless there's a compelling reason to give it to her that day (like if she missed a meal, like she does on Sunday mornings at church). Since that's the meal that most often triggers a vomit, we're hoping our vomit clean-up time will be reduced significantly.
Right now, we have meals scheduled at 7:30, 10:00, 12:00, 3:00 and 6:00, plus the bedtime snack as necessary. At each meal, I feed Elli for 20 minutes (or until the food and milk is gone). Sometimes meals take longer than that, if I'm giving her trials at the beginning of a new texture. The following is an example of one of Elli's meals:
In the meal above, Elli had pureed peaches, pureed pizza (yes, you can puree pizza!), gritty applesauce, and gritty pears. The gritty pears were only used as trials before the 20-minute timer started. For the rest, we alternate drink-bite-drink-bite-drink-bite and rotate foods. So, for instance, she would take a drink, bite of peaches, drink, bite of pizza, drink, bite of applesauce. At this point, we've reduced the positive reinforcment (i.e., playing with toys!) to once per rotation. As such, we play with toys after every bite of the hardest food (which in this case, would be applesauce). When we first started, we played with toys after every drink and every bite, so this is much simpler! When trialing a new food/texture, we play with a toy after she swallows each and every bite, so that she has motivation to swallow that new food.
This is the feeding chair that we use for all of her meals (unless the cover is in the wash thanks to a vomit episode):
Here is the typical setup required for meals. Well, actually, this is the neatest (and most infrequent version) of the setup required for meals:
Elli is convinced that whatever "friend" or toy she's playing with at the moment snack time starts has to watch Elli have her snack. Sometimes we end up with quite a collection of friends. This particular day, the friends kept coming all day long, until we had Penguin, Elli Baby, Santa Baby, Panda, Big Snoopy, the Woof-Woof, and the giggle bear all watching!
We figured out a while back that I spend an average of 3 hours a day just feeding Elli. On days when we have therapy sessions, that means that 4 hours of our day are booked before the day even begins. Figuring that out made me feel a whole lot better about all the things that I don't seem to accomplish on a regular basis! Some days I feel as if we'll never get to a point where Elli eats like a "typical" 2 year old (whatever that is). Then we'll have a few good days and I'll see hope that, with enough time and effort, she'll get there. I guess that is the way with most marathons - there are good moments and bad!
1 comment:
Her weight gain is good news! Can't see any of the pictures though! :-(
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